The Engine

Pandemonium by Thomas McCarthy (Carcanet, 2016) The Occupant by Jane Draycott (Carcanet, 2016) Pandemonium is the mythical capital of Hell, created by the poet John Milton in his epic Paradise Lost .  Pandemonium is where the maker of chaos resides, an unhinged anarchist, an artist smearing Heaven with his dirty protest.  More than this Pandemonium is a Hell made in Ireland by venture capitalists, bankers, hedge fund managers.  John Martin’s Pandemonium (1825) is a visual recreation of the stump outlined in Milton’s vision but it is not a place of human habitation.  It is an obviously infernal region complete with fiery cracks that delve deeply into the swirling lava and fire below and Satan (presumably) stands before his headquarters, arms, shield and spear aloft, hailing the misery of his destructiveness and the minor demons that abound within the halls of his palace.  John Martin (1784-1854) was an artist of the north-west of Britain, an outsider ...

Queer British Art 1861-1967 at the Tate Britain Queer British Art 1861-1967 at the Tate Britain The title of this exhibition sets out a definite temporal limit which does not stretch to the present day but stops at 1967.  The publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957 paved the way for legalisation.  It concluded that homosexuality was not a disease or an illness and the committee commissioned to produce it almost unanimously recommended legalisation.  The report was a response to various sensational legal cases of the era which included the conviction of the scientist Alan Turing and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.  Thus, an era of semi-legality for homo-erotic acts is defined which also corresponds to the zenith and then fading strength of the British Empire.  This is no coincidence since the two are intimately connected.  In 1861 the death penalty for sodomy was abolished.  Britain therefore left the ancient and medieval worlds behind.  Th...

THE ENCOUNTER: DRAWINGS FROM LEONARDO TO REMBRANDT at the NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON, SUNDAY JULY 23 RD , 2017 Art production suddenly changed in Renaissance Europe as paper became more readily available.  This was due to the dissolution of antiquated monopolies established during the medieval period.  In Italy the reproduction of stale, formulaic religious works had given way to the study of nature and the human form.  Before the Renaissance artists were expected to reproduce Biblical scenes, repressing their own creative natures at the behest of their church patrons.  Specific formulas had been established with rigid rules designed to inhibit the artist whose individuality was rigorously stamped out.  Artists did not even sign their works, the idea of an artist creating a recognisable body of work was unknown.  Furthermore, religious art only celebrated types belonging to different feudal classes who were unindividuated.  Even Leonardo da...